


lost cause

by Anemoi



Category: The Stone Roses (Band)
Genre: M/M, ian voice: john "cocaine" squire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 16:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16391096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: Ian losing and finding and keeping some things, through the years





	lost cause

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redandgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/gifts).



> to rach, the ONLY OTHER PERSON IN THIS FANDOM, <3 u 5evr. if we started a band it'd be bigger than the beatles.
> 
> ..and to whoever might look in the stone roses tag

 

 

> "I didn’t know the cost  
>  of entering a song—was to lose  
>  your way back.
> 
> So I entered. So I lost.  
>  I lost it all with my eyes  
>  wide open."

  
  
  
  
  
  


If Ian was going to be honest it ended way before the phone call. He was good at ignoring the signs then, the little cracks at the edges of the frame before everything shattered and fell at his feet. Reni leaving. The drugs _._ John looking at him like he was a total stranger. It’s just- it was easier to hang on to the call because it blew everything else away with its magnitude. A blazing hot white zap, the details utterly lost in Ian’s memory because he couldn’t think about it without being so angry he could break something.

He only recalls the aftermath. Mani’s tight face when Ian showed up at his door, fists flying.

“He’s fucked off, the cunt,” Ian says.  
  
“I know,” Mani says. He doesn’t meet Ian’s eyes. _Of course._ He breaks a lot of things, that day.

  


-

 

A week later in the lawyer’s office: the curtains blowing open from the sudden rainstorm and raindrops on the documents, Mani’s eyebags deep enough to drown in; how Ian put his hand down on the table flat palmed and deliberate, scrawled his name hard enough to dig grooves into the smooth paper. John’s dark head bent over the table during his turn, and Ian looking away before their eyes could meet. Manchester, outside the window, cut through by the knifelike tracks of raindrops on the glass.

He hadn’t talked to John. Not once. Their sleeves barely touching when they come out of the doorway in sync. Running under the rain to separate cabs.

 

-

 

Four months later back in Mani’s house: Ian doesn’t smash anything this time but he’s cursed Oasis out with every expletive under the sun, and then some he made up on the fly. Mani sitting with his head in his hands, half bemused and half amused at Ian, pacing the length of his living room and kicking the furniture. The kettle boiling behind him and steam rising in soft wreaths behind him. It’s August, it’s still hot enough for Ian’s shirt to stick to him, his hair all staticky with rage.

“Call him,” Ian says, sitting down at the kitchen table. Mani stares at him, feigning confusion.  


“Why? What’ll I say?”  


“Just call him. He’s not going to pick up if I do it.”  


“How’d you know, have you tried?”

 

Ian glares at Mani, but Mani’s been around too long for that to phase him. Mani sets his arms on the table and stares back, unimpressed.

 

“I’m not gonna call him,” Mani says, looks Ian entirely too long in the eyes with too much understanding. Ian wants to kick over his table and ask him how Reni’s doing. He doesn’t; these days the same thing hurts them both.

 “I didn’t think he’d do it,” Ian says at last. John playing for Oasis. Knebworth. Super-fucking-nova. The worst of it was he could see it, even though he hadn’t, avoided the telly and the papers and everything that could have a picture of John in it. He could see it: John always looked much the same every show, contained until he wasn’t, concentrating over his guitar, head bent.

 Mani gets up, sighing, the harsh scrape of his chair leg against the kitchen linoleum. Ian watches him, not really seeing anything but hearing everything extra loud somehow, the chink of mugs on the counter, water pouring, Mani coming over to set the mug of tea in front of him.

 “Got any booze?” Ian asks instead. Mani nods.

 “Just drink your tea first,” Mani says. He pushes Ian’s shoulder, ruffles his hair a bit, and drops a kiss on the top of his head, rough and sudden. Ian closes his eyes and drinks his tea.

  
  
  


-

 

Eight months later he’s sitting with Mani at the end of the world. It’s autumn, leaves shedding off the trees in great big bunches, like colorful snowfall. After they break the news to everyone who needs to know, Ian gets the weed and Mani gets the booze and they meet up, and wordlessly, methodically go through it.

Ian doesn’t mix the two much when he can help it, since it seemed to do something weird to his head- thickens his thoughts and edges them closer to his consciousness like a darkening cloud. At the end of the night he has to focus, with an effort, to stop everything going to black. It buzzed in and out of his vision instead. Blink- Mani slumped back in his chair- Blink- Darkness- Blink-

Mani shoves a mug of water at him. “Drink.”

Ian tries to shove his face in the mug instead. Mani laughs - Ian makes an aggravated face at him- and Mani says, “I’m joining Primal Scream.”

Ian sighs. “I know.”

Mani shrugs. He’s staring at the ceiling, big eyes still lucid, and Ian feels vaguely envious, both for not feeling sick and having a exit strategy. It was his own fault for not saying yes to any of the offers he’s had, for sticking to his guns till the end.

 

He remembers Mani in the beginning, vividly, image so crisp and clear it seemed to cut into the present reality somehow. Maybe it was just mixing weed and cheap gin- everything coming in a rush: Mani putting Ian’s scooter helmet on and laughing, Mani’s slicked back hair, his stance playing bass with feet planted wide and grinning, the moment they realised that Mani was their missing piece, their missing sound; Reni following him around like a puppy for weeks, the four of them slip sliding down the iced over pavement of their street in London, mid-winter, whooping at the top of their lungs.

 

It feels like he’s losing more than he thought every time he thinks it. Mani must have seen it in his face because he leans forward, catches Ian in a hug that makes the world spin a little bit, darkly.

“You’re not getting rid of me,” Mani says.

 “‘M not trying to,” Ian says. He wishes people believed him, at this point. “It’s the last thing I’d want.”

 

 

 

- 

After the band breaks up Ian gets lost for a while. Puts his guitar in a shelf and leaves his records to gather dust.

He thinks about growing things in the garden, something colorful like flowers, waits for spring to come and thaw the snow covered banks, then goes out in the first rainstorm and buries his arms elbow deep in the black muck, the good kind, the stuff thats the best for growing. Wishes he could stay there and grow. Tips his head up into the grey sky and lets the rain fall on his eyelids, hard as kisses.

Gradually it comes back to him. So he washes off the mud, stares at his face in the mirror that stares back at him, mouth all set and severe, as though mirror-Ian already knew what Real Ian had just caught on to.

 

He phones Aziz, afterwards, toweling his hair dry with one hand. Picks up his guitar, brushes away the tender flash of how it looked in John’s hands, and starts a song from the beginning.

 

-

 

The phone call in ‘96 obliterated the two years that came after, shattered spacey months filled with court dates and lonely tours and broken bones in back alleys, until Ian stepped out of prison with his bin bag full of clothes and books and gathered detritus in ‘98 and walked through Manchester again like he’s seeing it for the first time.

Manchester’s not beautiful in his memory, not the bones and brick of it, the grey overcast sky and snow flurries and the cold snapping at the tip of his ears, but he wanted it to be. He wanted it in color and sound, bright lemon yellow and splashes of indigo and crimson and leafy green, sounds that shimmered and spun down the back of your neck. Weirdly enough, that desire, _same old same old,_ made the clock start ticking again. Ian thinks, frozen solid, _It’s time to start again._  


At the turn of his own street he stops and stares at John’s parents door. Takes a deep breath, skirting the black hole that was John’s existence, probing the edges tenderly, like a missing tooth ripped out of his gums. It was a bit ghostly, that so many things still stayed the same, despite.

He walks past it, dragging his bag through the slush, till he gets to his own house, brushes the snow off the gate, falls gratefully into familiar warm faces.

 

-

 

Mani was on tour but he calls before Ian’s even settled in at his parents’ place. It twists something in Ian’s chest and smoothes it out, not having to queue for the phone and talk with his back turned to the guard, listening to Mani’s voice in the familiar comfort of his home. They stay on the line too long, till Mani’s exhausted every scrap of gossip and bitched about his tour mates good naturedly. Ian feels a brief tinge of jealousy; Mani’s new brothers on the road.

“You still talk to John?” Ian says, eventually.

“We talked before I started the tour. He said he’s sent you something, for Christmas? You get it?”

“Yeah. Tell him thanks,” Ian says. Mani’s careful silence told Ian he expected something more.

“That’s all,” Ian says. “Just thanks.”

“Ian,” Mani starts. Ian holds the phone further from the ear, covers the earpiece with his thumb and says, “What? What? You’re breaking up” then puts the phone back in the cradle.

 

He had no time for John, he’s exorcised those particular demons long past. The last thing that hurt was the feeling he’d had, seeing that red box in the guard’s hand, the rattle it made landing on the bed. How he’d seen the maltesers and knew it had to be John, before he’d even opened it. The lackadaisical swirl of John’s familiar handwriting. _I still love you._ Flipping the paper over and over, hoping against all hope there’d been a number, something else. Even just, _call me._ How he’d ripped the box apart and jammed too many maltesers in his mouth in one go, that familiar-unfamiliar sweetness rushing headlong to his heart, melting with a pop on his tongue.

If he’d let Mani carry on he’d probably have asked Ian questions he couldn’t answer, like, _Why haven’t you forgiven him yet,_ and truth be told, Ian couldn’t face that at all, couldn’t forgive at all the way he still felt anything for John.

  
  
  
  


-

Four years from the so called new beginning he’s back in Mani’s house, shaking the copy of John’s interview in Mani’s annoyed and long suffering face, spitting in rage.

“Ian, I’m on my way to studio-”

“Mani. Mani, look, what the _fuck_ is he thinking, have you heard his new songs-”

“Brown, you’re a knobhead, of course I’ve heard his songs. I was at his house the other day.”

Ian’s so angry for a second he opens his mouth and no words come out. Mani raises his eyebrows and finally gives up making his practice on time, throws himself on the sofa and gestures for Ian to hand over the mag.

“It just says he wishes you’d make up already,” Mani says, scanning through it.

Ian sets his jaw and glares. “Why were you at John’s?”

“We’re friends, Ian, I know it’s a difficult concept,” Mani says. Ian wants to shove him off the sofa but resists. 

“He’s got no right,” Ian says finally, sitting back rigidly, wishing he could burn a hole through Mani’s upholstery just by staring. He didn’t know exactly _to what,_ just the mere thought of seeing the interview made him incandescent with rage, John’s album, John’s bloody songs, the fact he’s starting _singing_ when every time he sang the melody to Ian back in the Roses he’d acted like pulling teeth-

Mani snaps his fingers in front of Ian’s eyes and sits up. Ian notices, somehow, that Mani looked absolutely exhausted, but not unhappy. Primal Scream suited him in a way that didn’t test his loyalty at every turn. Ian wonders, idly, if he was ever bored of them, if Mani missed at all the way the four of them came together like a drawn out car crash, spectacular enough you were scared to look away.

“I should let you get on with it,” Ian says instead, getting up. He holds his arms out for Mani, half in apology and half in guilt, that Mani had been to John’s before he’d come to Ian’s after the touring. Ian knows he’s a self centered bastard sometimes, but he reckons Mani knows that well enough, after all this time.

Mani shuffles into his arms suspiciously, and they sway a little, smack each others backs long enough to put a smile back on Mani’s face when Ian pulls away.

“You’re a treasure,” Ian tells him.

“Don’t say anything stupid to the journos, please,” Mani says, “I’m about two steps from begging you.”

Ian shrugs, drops the mag in Mani’s bin on his way out. “Not if they don’t ask me to.”

  


 

-

He does end up listening to John’s whole record, texting annoyed and spiteful comments to Mani when he couldn’t help it. _Tell him his voice is like a fish getting beaten to death in a bucket. Tell him “couldn’t repackage the brand” is a shite lyric._

Mani always responds _No._ until he gets fed up and tells Ian to fuck off and tell John himself, but he’s not going to enable anymore animosity between them, it’s going to give him ulcers and he’s got a family to feed from a lowly wage of touring the world with his band.

Ian sulks until he sees John singing _Fools Gold_ at some festival or other, absolutely butchering it with his folky rough voice, and decides enough’s enough. If that’s John’s way of trying to get his attention he’d give as good as he got.

He skips the customary call to Mani this time, since Mani was on tour, and goes to Scotland himself with a replica band and plays the whole damn album, leaves Fools Gold out, sets it down on the table like some sort of challenge.

  


 

-

 

Truth be told, it dragged on him, the way those familiar songs felt with crucial pieces missing. The back and forth of it, dodging John’s mum when he went back to visit his parents because he couldn’t face her, not when he’s engaging in some sort of public guerrilla warfare with her son. The way they snapped pieces off each other in the papers, Ian one day and John the next, stabbing where it hurts the most with the instinct of old friends. How the public fed off that like sharks smelling blood in the water, and how Ian felt completely unable to stop. He stops phoning Mani when the worn out excuses become threadbare. He knows, peripherally, that Mani didn’t deserve all this, Mani trying to hold the tenuous strings between the four of them together somehow by being jovially optimistic at all times.

He bumps into John’s mum one weekend despite all attempts to avoid her, sheepishly helps her carry in the shopping, calling her Mrs. Squire like he had when they were little kids playing around the block. She doesn’t mention John at all, until the end, when Ian refuses cake and tea and squirms in the hallway praying for an excuse for a quick getaway.

“Ian,” She says, eyes kind, then stops, as though she was trying to gather the right words.

“I’ll see you later,” Ian says quickly, then backs out of the door before she can call him back. The soft click of the lock behind him makes him flush hard enough to tingle his scalp, and he curses John all the way back down the street.

  


 

-

That encounter made him shelve the snippy comments about John for a while, quiets down and focuses all his attention on his songs, all quiet on John’s end according to Mani’s unsolicited reports. Apparently he’s been painting mostly, his guitar album gone up in smoke. Ian doesn’t know what to make of that, ignores the melancholic pang in his chest at the thought of John not playing anymore.

“He deserves it for thinking he can go off on his own,” he says to Mani instead, and Mani raises his eyebrows like he doesn’t believe a word Ian says.

“How’s Reni doing,” Ian asks. It doesn’t have any sort of sting to it. Mani launches happily into Reni’s life story currently, their illicit jam sessions, stopping short of inviting Ian along.  


John sends him a tape in the mail in the spring. _You need a decent guitarist_ , the note said this time, and the tape was a backing track that didn’t shimmer and sparkle but slouched along with hands in pockets, chin jutted out and collar up. It fit Ian’s other songs to a t and it felt like John had reached right into the middle of his chest, past bone and sinew, and put his finger on an artery in Ian’s heart. He’d listened to Ian’s songs, then.

Ian plays it for a bit, even sings something over the top, lets himself admire the familiar swoop of guitar. John had even got drums on it, which made Ian wonder just how much work went into the tape. John’s obviously upgraded from pulling Ian’s pigtails to waving a white flag from a distance, hiding behind the postage system and Mani. _Just call me_ , Ian thinks, furiously, gripping the hard edged cover of the tape in his hand, like he can send that thought right into John’s stubborn head. _To Ian_ it said on the front, loopy mismatched handwriting.

He puts it away on a shelf after that, pushes it all the way to the back and doesn’t say a thing to anyone else.

  
  
  


 

-

It would have gone on forever, Ian thinks, if Mani’s mum hadn’t died and blown their little charade right out of the water, revealing their squabbles for the petty things they actually were. Mani had joked about it, before, how Ian and John would remain total ice cold cunts at each other and he’d be too afraid to get them in the same room together in fear a fistfight would break out. Ian had said, _Maybe we can meet when we’re too old to punch each other_ and Mani had chortled at that. He’d probably passed it on to John at some point, Reni definitely, the four of them stuck in a convoluted game of telephone nobody was willing to break out of.

After the funeral, Ian helps Mani re-knot his tie and pretends to fix his own while Mani stands there, looking lost and red in the eyes. Everyone was in Mani’s house, ready to go down to the pub after some rest. Ian leaves Mani alone, after a bit, conscious only of how useless he was in shouldering the grief and irritated by it, and goes out to the garden after bumming a cigarette off one of Mani’s friends.

He hadn’t smoked in years. The principle was the same, like riding a bike, even though his lungs can barely take anymore pummeling at this point. He holds the smoke in and counts, then lets it burning out of him into the spring air. Yet another spring, indistinguishable from the rest. He hears the screen door behind him slide open and someone step out beside him.

 

“You shouldn’t smoke at your age,” John says.

For a moment, Ian doesn’t turn to look at him. Then he does, and it’s like the world shifts a bit on its axis, like the lens blurred out comes back clearer in focus, like he’d never stopped seeing John everywhere, after all. He wanted to punch that mildly concerned look off John’s face and rub it in the hydrangeas and then kick him till he breaks John’s ribs. He wants to reach out and touch John and make sure he was really, solidly there, that all the years apart has changed nothing. _Right,_ he thinks, so that’s why he’s avoided John for so long. Because he would have forgiven him as soon as he saw him.

In the end Ian stumbles a half step towards him, not yet sure which option he was going to choose, and John’s arms open automatically, so Ian thinks, _this is the most apology you’ll ever get_ and goes, fits himself against John too close and perfectly.

John’s all stiff against him, like hugging a post or a slab of marble, and he smells sort of different than what Ian remembered, sort of-- windy, like he spent a lot of time outdoors walking through knee high grass. It might have been minutes, it might have been hours, but Ian stays there, eye closed, fingers digging into John’s shoulder blades, until he feels John sigh and his shoulders drop. He’s skinny as ever and soft in the stomach.

From the glass doors he hears someone clap slowly, and Reni’s voice drawls, “This is touching you lot, stay there and let me get Mani so he can cry tears of joy for a change.”

Ian disengages himself and shoots Reni the bird, and when he looks back at John, John’s smiling, and he might as well have knocked Ian out for the way he felt when he saw that smile.

 

 

-

 

The week that followed felt like years, staying up all night at each other's houses, rolling back the tide with every missed story and unshared joke and Ian doing impressions till John’s laughing out right, tears streaming down his face. They were gentle with Mani at first, until Mani tells them to fuck off and lighten the mood and the fact that out of everyone he deserves to see his best friends reunited and acting the fool with each other the most.

They don’t mention getting back together until one night, John lying on the floor humming a tune and Mani picking up his bass to pick a few notes, and then Reni starts drumming a rhythm on the table with his fingers and Ian says, “Do it properly, you knobs.”

He doesn’t realise what he’d said till its out of his mouth and on the carpet in front of them, the elephant in the room spinning dizzily in the silence.

 

Then John sits up, sweeps his hair out of his eyes and says, “We could.”

For a second there’s a pause, like they’re holding their breaths, watching a coin flip through the air. Mani says, “Let’s _go_ then.”  

The four of them all run out together, years flying off them, Ian driving because he was the only one sober, Reni tapping on the dashboard and roaring out every lyric he remembered, Mani and John in the back giggling at every yellow light Ian rushes through.

They make it to Ian’s studio, messing about picking the right instruments, until the time it comes to actually playing something. There’s a quiet in the air, an anticipation, as though they were waiting for some unseen member to walk in.

 

Then Reni grins, bright crack of it spread right across his face like a dare, and starts the beat. They start soft, gathering power, and Ian’s grinning too, breathless, cross legged on the floor with the mic wire wrapped around his arm. Before he knows it the beat slips into something familiar, Reni raising his eyebrows at Mani and winking, Mani laughing out right and catching on. John tips his head, wry, but he’s smiling, something rare enough when he has a guitar in his hands that it makes Ian’s breath catch in his throat. They play and it becomes _Shoot You Down._

 

Ian raises his mic and their music makes way for his voice so it fits exactly right, like they’ve just come back to the studio from a day out in 1989.

  


 

-

It turns out Reni lives two streets down from Ian’s studio- _“Turn here!” “What?” “Turn! That’s my house”_ followed by Ian’s frantic swerving, John hanging to the car door and swearing- so they pile into the house and fall into the living room. Ian marvels at how everything looked so - normal. He supposed it meant something, Reni inviting them over finally, though he doesn’t doubt Mani’s been here more than once.

 

There’s a carefully framed photo of the four of them in the upstairs hallway, innocuous amongst the many holiday photos of Reni’s kids and family. Ian stops on the way to the bathroom and stares, feeling struck a little by the bittersweetness of them all, on top of each other and gazing into the camera, unsmiling and solemn. He doesn’t have one in his house, didn’t really know why, now that he thinks of it. Maybe because he couldn’t have stood seeing John there. He thumbs over the air in front of the glass frame, careful not to leave a smudge.

 

He didn’t know what time it was in the night, somewhere at the border of very very late and early morning, when Reni and Mani have disappeared off to somewhere in the house, leaving John and Ian in the living room, camped out on the carpet in blankets and cushions like boys.

“My back’s too fucked for this,” Ian says, rolling on the floor from side to side. John clicks the light off and there’s only a soft yellow table lamp behind them, making everything blurry and warm. They’ve pushed Reni’s coffee table to the side, lying with their elbows touching. Ian doesn’t think he could fall asleep, the enormity of what’s to come a glowing heat in the middle of him.

 

“Remember when you had that stupid pink scooter?” John says out of the blue, arms folded behind his head.

“Yeah? What about it,” Ian says, turning to look at him. Then his brain catches up to what John said and adds, “It wasn’t stupid, you knob.”

“You got stopped on practically every street. Took me to work one day and I was late and we fought for almost a week.”

“Yeah.”

“How’d we stop fighting?”

“Don’t remember.”

John’s looking at him now, and somehow over the years he’s become even better at schooling his expressions. Ian can’t quite tell his thoughts anymore.

 

“I’m sorry,” John says. He waits for a beat, then: “Does that fix anything?”

 

Ian thinks about it. The floor’s making all the bones on one side of his body hurt, and it’s very quiet and warm and sheltered where they are, and he can only see one slice of the ceiling lamp from this angle, a third of his vision blocked out by the settee on their left. The rest is whitewashed ceiling. He wonders when Reni bought this house. How they’d managed to miss that, when once upon a time they’d have piled into the same room if one of them needed to change a shirt. How do you just _let_ someone go?

It still hurts all jagged, like a guitar dropped on the floor, strings twanging in protest. He looks over at John again and tries to imagine John never leaving and tries to make it seem, once again, a firm and fixed concept, like the paths of planets in the solar system.

“Not really,” Ian says. John shuts his eyes but not before Ian sees that flash of hurt, a mirror image he’s seen too many times in his own. “Words are just words, yeah. Show me all the tunes you have for the new album, then we can talk.”

John laughs, shaky sounding. “Mani has newies,” he says. “I might need some time.”

“We’ve got that,” Ian tells him. “We’ve got time.”

John shifts closer, draws the blankets over them both. Ian shoves him around till they’re both comfortable and then doesn’t sleep till it gets light outside, John’s even deep breathing mingling with the first birdsong.

 

 

 

-

The truth was that Reni and John leaving didn’t cause the whole mess of it. The truth was it was always going to end, anyway - _Once you’re famous you die or you got to prison -_  because something that beautiful couldn’t be allowed to exist in this world for long without corruption. If it lasted long enough people will start to doubt it, the continuation of perfection, start to turn on what they used to worship. All along it was just a flash bang second of beauty, so short and brilliant the people who saw it fell to their knees and whispered always, hereafter, to each other, _Did you see it? Did you hear them? Were you there?_

 

And anyways, dying was the only way to resurrection.

 

 

 

-  


They start small and build upwards, every gig a brick in the wall, spreading the word, _The Roses are back-_

They slip into the ritual of it easily, both the heights and the lows, the monotony of bus rides spent in exhausted silence, toppled into each other like fallen dominos, _Resurrection_ played right so that the whole stage shook and reverberated from the crowd, glassy nights spent outdoors gulping down the clear air of a foreign country, the inevitable spats and fights and make ups and taking the steps up to stage to do it, all of it, over and over again.

It’s during one of those shows in Europe, maybe France or Spain, Mani and Reni already bouncing on the stage and Ian hurrying from a last minute bathroom break. John’s dithering by the door, waiting for him, and so-  right before they go on stage Ian leans in- one heartbeat’s time- presses his lips to John’s- dry and warm - and pulls back. Maybe in other worlds it could count as a kiss.

“What’s that for?” John stares, nonplussed. It’s about as close as he comes to surprise.

Ian grins, outside they’re shouting in unison, _Stone Roses Stone Roses Stone Roses_ , and the stage light will be hot as the sun beating down on his neck and neon colored. He can already smell the flares, spilled booze, the dangerous scent of something burning swilled by a soft wind.

“Luck,” Ian says, and leads the way out, both hands up in the air to bestow benediction upon their crowd.

  


 

-  


And when they played, when they _really_ played, it wasn’t nostalgia.

It wasn’t nostalgia. Even though it burned through the start of the gigs as acrid as smoke, something you could smell in the air- The long lines of middle aged balding men clutching their tickets and eyes shining, even though memories softened the blurred edges of their faces and made them seem young and boyish again- when Reni picked up his sticks, when Mani strummed- once, twice- when John slid the strap of his guitar over his shoulder-

It wasn’t nostalgia, any more. It was pure time travel. To step from one second to the next and be wholly different, the four of them coming together and fitting as snug as puzzle pieces, the starting baseline like a new heartbeat for a lifeless body.

It wasn’t _like,_ it _was_ \- It was the Stone Roses.

The crowd doesn’t wait for Ian’s voice; they’re singing to Mani’s bass, Mani grinning a little wonderstruck still after all these years, they’re rocking on their heels with their heartbeat syncing to Reni’s drums, and then they’re singing to John’s guitar, rising sweet and clear above the arena, notes wrapped in gold and struck deliberate and straight as a punch to your chest. When Ian steps forward to the mic, the crowd is already in full voice.

He sings, slots his voice in amongst them, between the music and the heartbeat and the flares and the thousands, exactly where it’s supposed to be.

He sings, _I wanna be adored._

  


_-_  


If life was a movie he’d end it right at the end of a gig, when the last hum of the bass has faded but the crowd is still fervent, and he’s stepping towards the other three and wrapping his arms around them as far as they’d go, and they’re together, united and triumphant at the performance they’d given, how they’d proven the critics wrong, that the magic was all of them, at once, as it always was, how this time they will be different, take back a crown long overdue.

Maybe he’d end it a bit later, come to that. End it right with Noel Gallagher putting a crown on his head and a record deal in his hand and 5 stars on every website review.

But he couldn’t; his life had always been gathering the pieces, bit by painstaking bit, and what magic there was comes brief and sets all their lives alight to burn as fuel. Everything he already had was more than what was written in the fates for him in the beginning, taking the punches for John in that sandpit, singing his heart out in a boozy cellar.

They were the Stone Roses, so all that made sense second time round. Patience is a virtue and all that. If he had to learn a lesson in all the years he’s lived-

  
  


-

He’s out in front of John’s house, trying to stare over the horizon and discern whether the black dots on the fields were sheep or trees, the other three clattering about in the kitchen, John’s old dog bouncing in their way. The door bangs open, and John steps out, brushes back his too-long hair and leans an arm on Ian’s shoulder. He takes the cig from Ian's hand and Ian feels, brief, John's calloused fingers brushing his. 

“What are those?” Ian asks him, taking his weight easily. He points over at the fields.

“Sheep,” John says, not looking at Ian’s hand and exhaling smoke right up at the sky, blue fading to violet black.

“You keep any?”

“Not anymore. Really expensive upkeep, you wouldn’t think it was but-”

“Sell a few more of your paintings, then.”

“You want to buy one?” John says, but the corner of his mouth curls up. He hands the cig back to Ian. “I think Reni’s burnt dinner. Come on in.”  


Ian drops his cigarette on the soft dirt of John’s driveway, grinds it out under his heel, and follows John in.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> opening quotes from Ocean Vuong bc im predictable. thanks for reading! <3


End file.
